Possibly there’s a chance that certain sugarcane choppers go to Heaven, a clean place where there are no long sun-scorching days, no green buses. But there has to be music. Because somewhere a talented Jamaican is dancing and gliding gracefully to some celestial reggae.
Even if there’s no music at all, angels will certainly hear it as soon as they see Movement dance.
The Jeeters
I HAD TO STOP MY TRUCK.
Pulling off the red-clay road, I jumped down from the cab of my pickup and walked back about thirty or forty feet.
“You deserve saving.”
Picking up the large dark-green turtle, I was surprised how heavy it felt. A big one, dishpan size. Its shell could have served as Goliath’s war helmet. Carrying it to the road’s edge, I hopped a ditch, fixing to release the turtle to a cactus patch, in shade. Beyond the cactus was a stand of low-growing palmetto that the Florida swampers call fan palms. Two main varieties. Smooth-stalked and thorny. This was thorny: little curly barbs (on a brown stem) that can chew at flesh and near eat it.
Setting the turtle down and straightening up, I made that alarming one-second discovery that I wasn’t alone. Between a pair of palmetto shrubs, there was a human face, staring at me.
Not for long.
Eyes now looked at the turtle. From a distance of ten yards, I could identify a child’s face. Very lean, and very dirty. Long stringy hair that appeared not to have known a comb or a brush. A little girl. Moving a step or two to my right, I saw more of her. Her shabby dress seemed to have no color. Just cloudy. She pointed at the turtle. I guessed that she might have been after it as I’d stopped the truck and that she was concerned I was going to rob the turtle for myself.
“Hello,” I said.
No reply. As expressionless eyes continued to study me, she neither advanced nor fled. Her age was perhaps eight or nine. Thin arms. Circling her unwashed mouth was a black ring of grease.
“My name’s Rob.”
No response.
Until now, the turtle had been as motionless as the little girl. Then a head appeared, a tail, four clawed feet. He crawled forward, unhurried as turtles are. Not interested in the turtle but curious about this child, I followed.
“Where are you going?” I asked him. His flat cream-colored belly shell was drawing a smooth trail on the loose sand, with a double border of claw swipes. The turtle track reminded me of marks left by an Army tank.
I followed the turtle.
The little girl followed me.
Of the three of us, I was the only one who contributed to the conversation, but no sophisticate could label it inspired chatter.
“Better hurry,” I advised the turtle. “Because this young lady and I are after you and it’ll be a cinch to catch up.”
We all stopped. I stopped because the turtle did. She stopped, I presumed, because I had. Then a guess. Pointing at the turtle, and to her, I made signs that suggested she wanted the turtle for food. If not a turtle, she certain was in need of some other dish, because this child was close to bone-skinny. Too close.
“Are you hungry?”
She nodded.
“Me too,” I said. “What’s your name?” No answer. “My name’s Robert, or Rob, mostly.” I thought for a moment or two. “Maybe you and I ought to capture that big ol’ turtle and eat him for supper.”
She shook her head. Then, to my amazement, spoke.
“I fetch him to home.”
Florida, 1977. Turtle and Dove, pony mare and foal, a filly.
Smiling, I nodded, and told her, “Okay, he’s all yours. Not mine. Because you probable saw him first.” To substantiate my intent, I pointed to myself and shook my head. Then, pointing to the turtle and to her, I nodded.
Running to the turtle, she tried to lift it, but couldn’t. Oh, perhaps a couple of inches, but that was about it. Setting the turtle down, she looked at me helplessly, as though fixing to sob or run away.
I went to her.
“Please don’t cry,” I said. Bending, I picked up the turtle, realizing why such a burden was too much for her to tote. “Which way, and how far?”
Saying nothing, she walked away briskly, looking over a bony shoulder to check if I followed. Again, as I walked, I noticed her dress. A pathetic rag. Suitable, however, for Florida heat, perhaps only in the privacy of a swamp. Earlier, I’d seen no indication that the little girl wore any underwear. Needless to add, she was barefoot, including dirty legs, ankles, and toes. But kids have a right to get dirty.
The turtle was becoming heavier.
I was starting to realize that this whopper was the largest turtle I’d ever lifted. Or carried. Believe this for sure, his tail was to my belt buckle, head forward. At the moment, he was totally withdrawn from society, and I was grateful for his momentary hermitage.
“Brother,” I told my turtle friend, “give up desserts.”
As I glanced at the trusting little girl, now walking ten steps in front of me, it seemed plausible that this child had never eaten even one dessert in her lifetime.
Moving further and further inland, I was wondering if I’d again locate my truck. The landscape changed. Closer to the road, the trees that we had passed beneath had been pines and oaks, a few sycamores in full leafy green. Behind me the earth had been firm, harder and dryer. Here, however, the dirt was a soft, blacker muck.
More ferns.
Along the road, high ground, I’d heard the musical variety of mockingbirds and the sharp chit chit chit of cardinals. No longer. As I walked along, I noticed more wading birds, long-legged white cranes and blue herons. Frogs and cicadas seemed to be tuning up, stilling as we passed, then resuming their constant choir. I saw a white ibis standing silently on one long slender leg, her scimitar beak cocked and ready to become a weapon.
On my right was a dead bell-bottom cypress.
My nose sensed muscadine and wild coffee. All the smells were damper now, cooler and more intense. A Florida swamp, if you’re unfamiliar with it, has a way of suddenly surrounding you, with no north, south, east, or west. Just a jungle of green.
Large leaves hang thicker, lower, more entangling.
Ahead of me, the child was walking a definite path, serpentining around black puddles of swamp water, ducking in between the long, dangling vines, some of which were stouter than wharf rope. A wood duck, displaying his rainbow of plumage, darted across a small pond of dark water, his V-shaped wake spreading to both banks.
I breathed moist greenish air.
But smelled smoke.
As the little girl stopped, she turned and pointed at a log shack, on stilts because of the wet terrain. A wispy scar of gray smoke was scraping its lazy line upward into the high greeny lace of cypress. Reaching her home at last, I put the turtle down, almost dropping him from my tiring arms.
A thin woman appeared at the door.
Her dress was identical to the little girl’s. The same cloudy cottony material, no pattern or color, only larger. My guess was that this woman had possible sewed both garments. Her hand clutched a can of beer.
“Hello,” I said. “We brought you a turtle.”
A dog came, quickly arched its back, and growled. From all I could see, it was a black-and-tan coonhound. The dog looked as poor as the people. The woman’s hair was long and yellowy white, totally unstyled, hanging in witch’s tangles front and back. Her skin was old, grayer than aging concrete.
“Who you be?” she asked, burping.
“I’m Robert.”
Briefly she looked at the motionless meal, then at the child (too young to be a daughter), and back to me.
“Who?”
“Robert. Rob Peck. If you demand to know my full name, it’s Robert Newton Peck.” I grinned. “But I don’t know the little girl’s name, or yours.”
If I expected an answer, I didn’t get one. Only stares from two aging eyes that appeared to be neither alive nor dead.
“Jeeter,” the child told me.
A name isolated, especiall
y if it’s unfamiliar, rarely sounds like a name. Merely like a noise. A bird call. Here, from all sides, I could hear birds, bugs, frogs—a steady throbbing swamp song of endless tempo. An eerie backdrop to one more natural chirp.
“Jeeter,” the girl said again. “We’s be Jeeters. Like you. All peoples got Jeeter for a name.”
Her little voice was as soft as her dress. A sound of cotton. Almost no sound at all. Uneducated, unspoiled, she spoke so slowly.
I asked a dumb question. “Do you go to school?”
Her sustained silence, however, was providing answer enough. She didn’t know what school meant. It would be silly, and rude, to explain to these two people that I was an author. For once, I resisted trying to impress the ladies. Appraising the coon dog, I decided not to move around too much, or too quickly. The dog’s teeth were bared. The black hair along the dog’s spine had bristled erect, the shoulder bones up, as if it was concentrating on a larger-than-customary human.
I turned away, to the little girl.
“So, your name is Jeeter. What’s your other name?”
“Belly.”
“Your name is Belly Jeeter.”
“Belle. My granny say Belly sometime.”
“Oh, I see.”
Without another word, Granny Jeeter took her beer and disappeared back inside the shack. The dog stayed. Belle started picking up pieces of dry wood. Seeing what she was doing, I helped her.
“Belle … Belle?”
She looked my way, holding a stick.
“Do you have a mama, or a daddy?”
Scowling, she said, “I got me Granny,” sounding as though she was surprised I didn’t thoroughly understand.
“Just the two of you?”
“Three. We’s got a dog. He be a Jeeter dog.”
“Yes, of course.”
Dropping the wood she had been carrying, Belle scratched her head, curving the delicate fingers of her right hand into an inflexible claw, digging at her scalp. Head lice, one could presume. If I could ever find this place again (better yet, and more importantly, first find my way out), I’d bring Belle a bottle of dog shampoo. Industrial-strength.
All around this shack, the ground was littered with debris, leftovers of junk food, bread wrap, empty cigarette packs, a plastic six-ring holder from a six-pack beverage of unknown brand. And there were countless empty cans everywhere. Beer. Beer. Beer.
Litter is a fact of life, I suppose.
Where the Jeeters resided was a spot of natural savage beauty. Except for ugly humanity. I smiled. Here I stood, the largest hunk of humanity in sight; ergo, the biggest litter problem. At least the Jeeters would eat a turtle. How many times had my powerful, expensive cars hit and killed a road animal, leaving it behind, unused?
Together we built a fire in an outdoor pit. Using a bucket and making several trips, I filled the pot with swamp water. Once it was angrily boiling, the giant turtle’s life ended in a second or two. We cooked it, shell and all.
I ate very little.
Not because I dislike turtle meat, but because I was observing how skinny little Belle and lean old Granny tore at their portions. Hands stinging from the hot meat, they couldn’t wait for it to cool. Turtle flesh is an acquired taste, one I never fully acquired. A turtle, like a turkey, has several different varieties of meat, all edible if your dietary standards are adequately relaxed.
“This is good,” I lied.
Belle and Granny just chewed.
With a rock, I busted apart the complete shell so the coonhound could munch too. He did, cracking a few bones with his teeth, tail wagging. Years ago, in a swamp one night, camping with a Calusa friend, I happened to hear a similar noise, very loud. A cracking, crunching report.
“What was that?” I’d asked.
“Gator.”
“Killing something?”
The Calusa nodded. “Big turtle.”
This is the Florida that is real, the one that tourists never see, or hear, or taste.
It is forest, swamp, and untamed survival. Best of all, it is sharing a fresh-boiled turtle with a very old swamper and a very young one.
Granny and Belle.
A year later (believe it or not, with a bag of oranges, bread, a white plastic bottle of shampoo, and a comb), I tried to find my way back to visit the Jeeters. After a few futile starts, I located the place. The shack was gone, destroyed, and little of it remained. Some of the local litter had begun to decay. With a sigh, I policed the area, tidying up as neatly as I could, burying the trash.
“Belle,” I called a few times, hoping.
Only the frogs answered.
Best Friend
VALOR.
This is the name my dog answers.
Years ago, I had only to whisper his name and he’d come. Now he is almost deaf, so as a courtesy I go to him. Sensing me, knowing my smell, a broken tail thumps the floor in welcome. Then slowly, with groanings of painful age, he forces himself to rise, ready for duty.
Valor is thinner now, almost fragile, no longer the burly coon hunter and bear tracker. I cannot ask him to splash into cold water to retrieve a fallen canvasback. Or drive a deer to my watch.
Frequently he naps indoors, seeking patches of sunlight to ease his stiffness. His eyes, which once shined brighter than horse chestnuts, are now cloudy, a look of winter. I must be careful not to rearrange furniture, for if I do, Valor may bump an uncustomary chair, and then appear to be shamed by his clumsiness.
As a hunter, his bark once sounded with orchestral variety, announcing a rabbit, a fox, a treed coon … or that he had found water or my truck.
Valor’s body has been bitten by a rattlesnake, raked by panther claws, hit by a car, kicked by a horse as well as by his former owner. Yet pain never soured his rapture for life. Except once, and then only briefly. Valor came whimpering home one night, his soft muzzle bristling with porcupine quills. Head in my lap, he lay trembling as my pliers removed each bloody spear.
He trusted me to do this unpleasant task, somehow knowing it had to be done, licking gratitude upon my face when I told him the last quill had been extracted.
Valor is deaf, blind, lame.
Today I must take a shovel and a pistol. The two of us will stroll our final outing together. A grave will be dug somewhere in woods where he used to hunt, or merely race the wind. Somehow he will know that what I’m about to do for him is just and merciful. One of my many quirks that he accepts.
No veterinarian’s needle will terminate his life in foreign environs. He will not die among strangers. Valor’s end must be private and dignified. For my dog, I promise that his death shall be painless.
Only his friend will feel the pain.
Spook and Rita
I MET THEM IN A DINER.
One of those pewtery Florida cow-town diners with a plain name that you’re as eager to forget as its decor. Not much of a seating choice. No table. Pick a narrow booth or a hard stool. As every booth was occupied, I took the counter.
Back in the kitchen, a radio was wailing a sad cowboy song. Merle was sounding more sorrowful than a flat puddle of flat beer.
A plump waitress, perhaps beyond her prime (me too), eyed me as I wishboned my legs to fork the stool’s torn leatherette top. Her uniform, half a size too small, was a skimpy white waitress dress trimmed with pink piping. A plastic Mickey Mouse head pinned a cheap lace handkerchief, folded fluffy to resemble a corsage, just north of an ample breast.
Beneath her opposite shoulder, a slightly warped name tag announced something about her life as well as her name: RITA.
“Coffee?” she asked.
“Please. Hot and black, Rita.”
“You got it, cowboy.”
After filling a white mug, Rita pivoted on the Cuban heel of a white Red Cross, landed the sloshing mug on the smeared counter in front of me, cracked her gum, and raised one eyebrow with what I guessed was a rehearsed gesture.
“Need a menu?”
“Thanks.”
Witho
ut reading it, I could probable predict what the breakfast menu was fixing to offer.
“Good Morning!” was its opening salvo at the top of the single see-through yellowing card. It was morning for sure. Early. On the clock over the coffeemaker, both black hands hanged into five thirty-three like a Fu Manchu mustache. Eyeing the menu instead of Rita’s generosity, I considered: one egg, two eggs, three eggs, ham, bacon, sowbelly, biscuits and gravy, golden pancakes (large or small stack), waffles, bass, or catfish. Fried potatoes and grits served gratis with every plate.
Rita returned.
“What’llyagonnahave?” she asked, without her Doublemint breaking stride.
I smiled. Even though Rita had been booked right out of Central Casting, she was perfect, and entertaining. “Eggs,” I said with a grin.
“What flavor?”
“Two over medium. And please ask the cook to puncture the yolks so they don’t stare at me like I’m babe-naked.”
Checking me up and down in less than a second, Rita nodded. “Anything else ya might like, cowboy?”
I cuffed back my beat-up silbelly Stetson. “Two strips of bacon. Crisp. Dry, not slippery. And a hot biscuit. No butter. Just orange marmalade. I’d like my breakfast on a warm plate. And please, when you get a chance, how about a refill on coffee?”
“In a shake.” Rita shook herself away. “Nobody can hustle everything to once. I only got one pair.”
I’d noticed.
While waiting for my breakfast to burn, or spill, I sipped coffee. It was near strong enough to poison rats, kill weeds, and peel varnish. This was genuine redneck coffee in which you could float a horseshoe. Instead of a taste, it was more like a burn. Or a cut.
Behind me, the screen door squeaked open, paused, then banged shut. An aging cowpoke grunted as he occupied the next stool. His worn knuckles appeared to have been busted in several joints, or in several saloons.
Rita hurried to greet him.
“Hiya, sugar bun,” the old man said.
Her smile was genuine, and warmer than a hug in a honeymoon hotel. “Hey, Daddy.” Eyes shining, Rita touched his leathery hand, giving it a quick pat. She handed him a rumpled paper. “Here’s the news, darlin’. So read up.”
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